Words of Wisdom

Dr. Jennifer Howard is a internationally acclaimed coach, licensed psychotherapist, teacher, energy healer, and is a leading thought leader on spirituality and psychology. She is also the host of the popular radio show, "A Conscious Life."
How do you feel when you don't know the answer to a question?
You might be thinking, well that depends on the question. Yet, many people feel anxious when they don't have answers. As children some of us were told that it's not ok to question things, or that someone who acts like they "know" is the real authority so asking questions might imply that you are less...

"I just came back from conducting our annual summer Dzogchen Center ten day intensive meditation retreat in Garrison, NY, on the banks of the Hudson River. During that time, I thought a lot, with my friends students and colleagues there, about the future of Buddhist wisdom and practice, and where it's coming from and going; preservation and adaptation, opportunities and challenges; commercialization and communication, both outreach and in-reach; sectarianism and ecumenicism; psychotherapy, meditation and neuroscientific research; the overlap of prayer, meditation, and mindfulness in action (such...

Genocide poses a crisis of conscience to all of us who care about the world beyond the small circle of ourselves. Yesterday I heard Mia Farrow speak and show slides at the World Trade Center in Boston about the humanitarian crisis and genocide in Darfur, West Sudan, where millions have perished. An actress, mother and activist, she is now focused full time on the Sudan crisis as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassadors on behalf of the United Nations Children's Fund.
In Khartoum, the capital of that country--Africa’s largest--mass murderer Omar Al Bashir has won re-election and is now the first head-of-state...

I was teaching a weekend meditation workshop in Seattle for Earth Day yesterday, and visited the arboretum and a research greenhouse at the U. of Washington there. My old friend John Perkins, economist and shaman, sent me this to think about and share.
Buddhism teaches that the whole world is my body, and sentient beings my heart-mind. We are each like cells in the body of the cosmos.
"10 Things You Can Do to Save the Earth
Dear Friends,
As part of the celebration of Earth Day, I wanted to send this very important message to you. Thank you for your continued support and all that I know...

My dear friend and colleague Cheryl Richardson, spiritual author and life coach, asks us to fill in the blank at the end of this sentence: The best actions for me to take to get back in alignment with my Highest Self are..."
(So: Please think about this for a few minutes. Later, take these into action.)
My answer of the moment:
To breathe, relax, center, focus and smile. Breathing in and out, consciously, intentionally, is like reconnecting/reuniting heaven and earth.
Breathing in, calming and clearing, relaxing, lightening and brightening the heart & mind. Breathing out, relaxing, letting...

You lucky people; click and attain enlightenment. Ah, if only it was that easy! Yet the world of Buddha-Dharma (liberating wisdom) is at our fingertips, in the palm of our hands, the click of a mouse. When you click this link, you will betransported to four minutes of Dzogchen transmission: in those four minutes you will hear this Long Island Jew with a Sanskrit name (Lama Surya Das) reading the poetic exhortation of a major 14th century Tibetan saint named Longchenpa (who probably composed the words in a cave), as translated by a "spiritual refugee" from England (Keith Dowman, author and scholar)...

Friends and relatives often comment on how preternaturally calm I am and seem to have become. This was not always so. I was an overactive and swift-reacting three sports jock growing up in the NY suburbs in the fifties and sixties. This acquired equanimity and centeredness I attribute to decades of meditation practice and the inner gravitas stemming from the sacred art and practice of Presencing. It helps keep my ship upright, steady, balanced, and on course even amidst stormy waters. Right yourself, and your whole world comes aright.
Once in the early ninetie, I was getting a ride in France...

deluded, a buddha is a sentient being;
awakened, a sentient being is a buddha.
ignorant, a buddha is a sentient being;
with wisdom, a sentient being is a buddha.
if the mind is warped, a buddha is a sentient being if the mind is impartial, a sentient being is a buddha.
when once a warped mind is produced, buddha is concealed within the sentient being.
if for one instant of thought we become impartial, then sentient beings are themselves buddha.
in our mind itself a buddha exists, our own buddha is the true buddha.
if we do not have in ourselves the buddha mind, then where are we to seek buddha?
--...

"The Dharma is not something separate from ourselves. We perceive Zen, the Dharma, and the Way to be outside of ourselves. But it is a serious error to create a distance between yourself and these things in this manner. If you make a separation between yourself and what you are looking for, no matter how much effort you make to lessen that distance, that effort will be in vain."
--from The Essence of Zen: The Teachings of Sekkei Harada (Wisdom Publications)

Ancient wisdom of the East reminds us that all life is a simply a dream-like dance of appearance and disappearance of all phenomena, and that impermanence rules. But unless you know this directly, from your own experience, it can seem like pretty cold comfort -- especially when times are hard!
As Buddhist wisdom for hard times, my late Zen teacher Kobun Chino Roshi used to say, "Falling apart, falling apart, all together falling apart, it can't be helped".What a relief to know that this isn't a bad dream, it's the nature of everything and everyone -- coming together and falling apart, like the elements...